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From what we can gather, Guido Dumarey is an ambitious man. Not only does he plan on submitting an official bid to purchase the Elizabeth factory from Holden-General Motors, but he wants to take the dead-man-walking Zeta platform, and build a complete range of vehicles.

Motoring continues to dish out details on the Belgian entrepreneur’s master plan, and one vehicle in particular sounds quite interesting. If Dumarey is successful, he spoke of bringing a premium, four-door ute akin to the GMC ute concept from 2008 to market.

The GMC ute concept debuted at the 2008 Chicago Auto Show and, you guessed it, rode on the Zeta platform. Dumarey told of an entire range of commercial, performance and luxury vehicles based around Zeta should he be successful.

“In Elizabeth you see your ute, your long wheelbase, your short wheelbase, you see your station wagon. You have more models.”

“What for us is important, is the platform adapted to like you have an Audi A6 Allroad; seven centimetres higher and you put a diesel in it, you put all wheel drive in it, hybrid, eight-speed.”

An insider familiar with the proposed production plans stated 2019 as a possible production start for a reborn Zeta line of vehicles, which would include all-wheel drive. Durmarey also felt he had a good shot at obtaining a free license for the Zeta platform.

Dumarey remains optimistic his efforts could create a prosperous lineup outside of GM.

“[Jaguar-Land Rover] was bought for $1.5 billion by Ratan Tata and everybody said ‘an Indian guy what will he do? They are now on 425,000 cars and they go to double. Step by step by step. The same at Volvo. Volvo is Chinese owned. It was under the umbrella at Ford but now it is much better.”

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— Sean Szymkowski

Sean is a lead staff writer for GM Authority. The words above are fueled by passion and large amounts of caffeine. Find him on Instagram: @helloimseann

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3 Comments

The key here is the cost of development. How many he plans to sell and where. Finally how much it will cost. If he can get this to work then he many have a chance but these are difficult things to resolve. Just selling them in Australia may prove costly to produce and even more costly to buy.

I am afraid he will make this a high end luxury model and will be priced out of the range of many of those who want to keep buying them. The higher price point would give him a profit but so few will be able to afford it.

This is how Musk and Tesla Survives along with the sale of carbon credits. Even then they are not making money just on product at this point yet.

I wish him the best. But he should be pressuring the Australian government, not us. Make it hurt if GM says no. And make it hurt hard. As Claire Underwood would say, make them suffer. That is the narrative that could win the day.